Mateo López, Nicolás Paris Vélez, Daniel Salamanca and Daniel Santiago Salguero are the minds behind the Bogotá-based “SOBRE EL ERROR / PASOLINI Y EL MUNDO MARGINAL” (ABOUT THE ERROR / PASOLINI AND THE THIRD WORLD) exhibition, which sees the public spaces of the Luis Ángel Arango Library adorned with original works. The works follow on from the art book, which gave life to the Tales-on platform. Running alongside this, at the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, is a project featuring several literary works by Pier Paolo Pasolini, which provide the inspiration for the Error theme and allow for direct, intense contact with the public. The Italian poet and director always took a great interest in the third world away from the West, searching for that alternative ideal, so alien to the widespread bourgeois movement that surrounded him. His thoughts were constantly impeded – and in some cases manipulated – by the dominant reaction of that period, which saw the scientific practicing of the paradigm of the marginalisation of the Error, taken as dissent, via the construction of a dogmatic wall called positivist progress.
The courtyard of the Museo de Arte hosts an installation dreamt up by Marco Milan and made up of four sound “entrances”, juxtaposing the contemporary experiences of Colombian artists with the still-relevant work of Pasolini. On passing through each entrance, an audio track recites a passage taken from the Italian artist’s books. The same books are located at various resting points through the museum and indicated by totems, inviting the public to take a break and read a few pages during their visits, so that the works contaminate the “Museum” entity, leaving their traces in its functional spaces.
The project has always been based on contamination between visual and written arts, to generate territorial study across many levels of perception and research. The ideal location of the museum and the library – one in front of the other – promote this process of urban and architectural dialogue. The idea is that of conceptual interaction between the two buildings, with literature the guest of visual arts and works of art the guest of the library, thus creating an imaginary connecting line between the “About the Error” project and the conceptual and inspirational exploration of the works of Pasolini, transforming this into cultural action.
The intention of this reimagining of perspective is to spark reflection on the locations for and ways of making contemporary art today and attempt to bring about new routes, new possibilities for interaction with the public through works devised as filters and passages running parallel to the primary functions of the locations involved in the exhibition. Pasolini’s books, and indeed the other elements of the exhibition, will be donated to a Colombian foundation working to educate disadvantaged classes in the country, in line with the philanthropic and public-interest values at the heart of the initiative.